


memory darned skin

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Biting, Clothing, Dark Magic, I'm Bad At Tagging, Kissing, Licking, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Poetic, Reincarnation, Rituals, poetic prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-11 23:04:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17455976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: SeparationBY W. S. MERWINYour absence has gone through meLike thread through a needle.Everything I do is stitched with its color.





	memory darned skin

**Author's Note:**

> for k.d.w.a.

The shirt Merlin wears was once red. Brilliant and bright, the color of a whole kingdom no one believes in anymore. It’s too big on him, hangs off his shoulder and bares his collarbone in the most obscene of ways. It wouldn’t fit him right, even if he weren’t a collection of bones strung together by grief and sheathed in pale memories. Once, the shirt was the softest thing he had ever owned. Once, the shirt was the  _ finest _ thing he owned and it smelled like musk and king and roses.  

Now the shirt is an indescribable color, and more patches than shirt. It’s rough where his hands were clumsy as he stitched, and translucent across his chest. It smells like nothing. 

It’s cold outside and his shirt really isn’t a shirt these days, but he wears it against his skin. He had a cloak once. Beautiful, and also red. Warm and soft, and absolutely foul smelling. He should’ve washed it long ago, washed the stench of death from the fibers. But it smelled like death and it felt like love and Merlin had wrapped himself in the cloak for a century, afraid that if he peeled it from his skin, it might dissolve, taking Merlin’s heart with it.

Merlin had climbed up a hill, chasing a dream, and ignored the weather. Powerful though he was, the weather did not bend to his will and the wind had ripped the cloak - his heart - from his back and drug it through the briars until all he could gather were strips and pieces. He braided them into a rope that still hangs from his rafters, rotting and brown.

So there’s a once-red cloak hanging from his rafters and a once-red shirt hanging from his shoulders. 

There used to be other colors and other threads. Deep blue velvets that sounded like festivals and banquets. Startling purple satins that sang coronation chants and wedding marches.  Yellow-stained-white cottons that left Merlin’s skin red and blistered and shone in his eyes like midday in midsummer. Green silks like the forest but soft as the air after rain, and imbued with dreams and quests. 

There’s a jar by his pillow where Merlin’s stores scraps of leather and dyed cotton and tries to remember what the gold stitching once resembles; a dragon, maybe, roaring from a bloodsoaked field and soaring early in the morning. Or stars, burned from the sky against large pinewood stakes. He can still hear the screams trapped in those strings.

When the once-red shirt slips off his torso, sinks into the mud, Merlin wails. He gathers the fragile cloth in his hands and tries every spell he knows to make it new again. Even gods have their limits however, and the cloth is almost as old as he is, older than most kingdoms today. When it dissolves in his hands, he’s left breathless.

Merlin travels. There’s a witch somewhere, neither as old nor as powerful as he, but skilled with fabrics and enchantments. Rumors have reached his ears through the years, how she can command cloth and yarn and silver; girls who sewed gold into their hair to catch their prince, boy’s who turned their skin to armor and were reborn soldiers that could not be defeated. 

There’s a cost, he knows. Humanity for the price of a single scrap of material. Girls who hang in galleries and boys who still stand tall on battlefields. 

He doesn’t want cloth or thread though, he has plenty. 

He digs his way to the center of the earth, fingers sharpened against the stone and flesh dry and cracked against the heat. He finds her tucked into a crevice bubbling with lava and she smiles at him.

Her skin is charcoal and her eyes empty, but her lips are bright and her teeth sharp. Merlin hands her the last of a breastplate, bent and rusted and unrecognizable, and watches as she shoves it in her gaping maw. 

She chews, winds it through the gaps in her teeth, drools all over the blistering rock. She spits at his feet, and he doesn’t want to, but he digs through flesh and carrion and other unnamable things until the needle pricks his pinky and his blood leaks in a small stream.

_ Paid in full, but you’ll never have paid enough. _ She cackles a horrible sounds that echoes in his brain for months, long after he’s fled her cave and rubbed his skin raw of her stench. 

It takes him another decade to work up the courage to do more than store the needle beneath his teacup. It takes the quilt on his bed ripping, disintegrating in his hands before he dumps his jar on his pillow. 

There are leather straps, cracked and rough, that he touches to the needle. He starts at his hips, threading them in unsteady x’s. Arthur’s lips press there; they’ve just returned from Ealdor, making sure the small villages stocks are high and Arthur’s tired and tactile. Ten tiny stitches, ten feather kisses, and Arthur’s blue eyes somber and sad as he says “They won’t starve this year, but that babe won’t make it. Gaius cannot make it in time.” He runs out of leather before he’s reached the other hip and Arthur blinks away. 

So he takes the silver and he ties a knot against the spit-crafted tool and walks to his mirror. He threads it through his eyebrows; there was never much of the fine silk. Arthur wraps the flimsy cloth around Merlin’s neck; rolls his eyes at the lavish and wasteful gift. Merlin laughs, watches it wink in his dark eyes like a secret. Morgana is there with them, and she’s smiling at them, her arm wrapped tight around Gwaine’s. “It’s a sign of goodwill, Arthur, imported from beyond the shores.” 

“It’s tacky and feminine.” But he doesn’t give it back, ties it around Merlin’s eyes that night as he fucks into him. He keeps it tucked under his pillow, and Gwen’s the one who finds it when they’re cleaning out Arthur’s chambers. 

Merlin presses two fingers to his brow, tries to feel where the hair meets silk, and he can feel Arthur kissing down his back, but he can’t see anything. When he’s done with the silver, the light makes his head pound.

There’s green from a vest he’s afraid to touch, but the needle seems insistent. So he lays on his bed and uses magic to mimic the laces of a corset he only wore once. Arthur is laughing at him, at the absurdity. “A girl! Merlin, they thought I was bringing my  _ wife. _ ”

Merlin holds the fine thing in his hand and smiles. “In everything but name, my love.” 

Arthur sobers, puts his hands on Merlin’s shoulders and spins him. It fits just below where Merlin’s breast would be, had he any. Arthur pulls it tight, fits his hands over Merlin’s hips and smiles into his neck. “It’s beautiful. You should wear it next time we visit Mercia.” 

Merlin had meant to, but they’d never made that next trip, and now Arthur digs his finger into the laces and pulls so tight he steals the breath from Merlin’s lungs in the worst of ways. 

“The purple, Merlin, in the crease of your thighs.” 

It’s a coarse fabric, perhaps why it is also the largest and most intact scrap. But Merlin obeys. He lets the needle guide his hand, and soon there’s a pouch below his balls, itchy and rude. “You were crowned in that shirt, Arthur.” 

Arthur’s eyes are dark. “I know, and you sank to your knees in front of everyone, with everyone, as if you were anything but my equal.” 

“You sank to your knees later.” 

Arthur sinks once more, bits where the purple meets pale flesh. Bites hard and bruising and Merlin’s eyes burn. He bites, and he sucks, and then he licks his way to the hairy balls, suckling them like ripe fruits. 

“And now the silk,” he says when he drops them from his mouth. 

“And where,” Merlin pants, “where does it go.” 

Arthur doesn’t answer, but Merlin knows anyway. Between his toes and around his ankles the needle flies and it  _ hurts _ more so than he had ever expected. Stockings in a shade so pale they’d never decided what color they were meant to be. Arthur stands, hands bound to Morgana’s and gold glittering on their heads. 

No one had been fooled; not Merlin in the finest clothing he’d every worn. Not Gwaine frowning amongst the knights. Not anyone in Camelot who knew of formalities and outdated laws. But the stockings had been so soft Merlin had wept when he’d removed them.

“And the blue now.” There’s so much blue, so many shades. Merlin starts with his left arm, thin rivers that follow his veins and criss-cross his shoulders and down into his right palm. His skin is cold, a river in winter, and his skin is hot, standing beside his king negotiating a treaty. He’s holding Morgana’s first babe, the blanket hand stitched and lopsided and he’s laying with Arthur in a cottage borrowed from a farmer. Arthur is weeping over his father’s tomb, and over Lance and Gwen’s graves, and he’s laughing as he watches the harvest bonfires bloom.

“Will you do the white against your lips?” It’s a silly request, but Merlin takes the yellow-stained-white and outlines his lips. There’s more, so he highlights his cheeks. Arthur’s sweat always tasted bitter against Merlin’s molars but sweet on his tongue and he licks the salt until his lips are chapped. Arthur is pinning him to wedding sheets and laughing as he asks, “Will the blushing virgin bleed?” They’re cowering in the hay, half-naked and afraid of what Leon and Gaius will do when they inevitably discover them shirking their duties. They’re hiding from the rain in a cave on the north border and Merlin didn’t pack a spare shirt so Arthur tosses his sweat-damp one at his fast. “It’s still dryer than your rags.”

Merlin’s hands shake as he gathers all the tiny bits of faded red. There’s so little, and it’s so destroyed. But he bites his white-stitched lips and balances his blue-lined wrist on his knees. The needle works with him, not at all a needle as it weaves the bits into a single string. Merlin pierces his breast with it, and for the first time his skin bleeds, but he forces himself on. Arthur spurring his horse forward, cape billowing in the wind as the needle pierces Merlin’s left nipple. Arthur standing before his people, promising a new era as it digs into the hollow below his neck. Arthur, laying on a bed of dry branches as it carves Merlin’s right pec apart. 

There’s a dragon, flames bursting from its mouth, outlined on his bloody chest, and he’s surprised at its size, though he knows he shouldn’t be. It’s warm to the touch and Arthur is sighing against his neck. 

“Oh Merlin, oh my love. What ever have you done to yourself?” Arthur is fading, like the magic fizzing at Merlin’s finger. All he has left is strands of gold the needle won’t touch and his stomach swoops as Arthur’s image blurs and ripples before him. 

He has magic in his veins though, and Arthur’s eyes never leave his. “They’re so bright, your eyes, when they glow.” 

He doesn’t look worried, doesn’t seem to feel the end in his bones like Merlin. The needle won’t fucking touch the golden strands so Merlin gathers it in his hands and pulls Arthur close. On a long trip, during a peaceful spring, Morgana and Gwen had spent  _ hours _ training Merlin’s fingers. Now they are nimble in a way they never were with the needle as they braid the gold into Arthur’s hair, weaving a crown against his temples. He works slow, but efficiently, pulling tight. So tight Arthur hisses as Merlin moves above his neck and over his right ear. But when Merlin is finished there’s a perfect circlet gleaming.

He can feel Arthur now, warm and real, smell that pleasantly bitter musk. Arthur smiles at him, a little watery and he kneels at Merlin’s feet. He lifts one foot, and kisses the hairy knuckles of his toes, the sharp arch of his foot, the hollow dip of his ankle. He lifts the other and repeats it, and silk pools between them. 

He kisses the place where thigh meets hip, kisses across low hanging balls, and bites the bruise already there. Purple drifts down Merlin’s thighs, against his calves, and settles into the silk.

He licks at Merlin’s hips, ten tiny kitten licks that tickle, that make them both laugh and the leather lands with a thud. Arthur spins Merlin and bites at the laces and Merlin can _ feel _ them pull from his spine and slink down to the floor. Arthur digs his teeth into the knob at the top of Merlin’s spine, before pressing his fingers into Merlin’s bloody chest. 

Arthur studies the dragon and there’s something almost like regret as he works at the thread, digging his nails in. He moves as though he’s simply unlacing a shirt, plucking scraps of coarse material from Merlin’s skin. He tosses it in a heap to the ground. 

Arthur doesn’t have to dig at the blue on his shoulders, at his elbows, wrapped around his wrist. He trails feather-light fingers up and down Merlin’s arms, laces their palms together, and like rain the blue falls between them.

There’s just his face now, and Arthur leans forward. He captures Merlin’s lips with his own, wrinkles his nose at the taste of his own exertion. But his tongue licks its way beneath the stitching, catches it between his teeth and follows it cheek to cheek. 

For a moment Merlin is worried he swallowed it, but then Arthur spits at his feet. It’s gross, and he can’t help grimacing which earns him a barked laugh. “Really, Merlin, of all of this  _ that’s _ what upsets you?” 

Arthur presses the heels of his hands to Merlin’s brows and panic rises from somewhere low in him. He shoves, tries to step away, but Arthur grips his wrist tight. “No, please! You can’t remove it!” 

“Merlin!” Arthur shouts. “Merlin be still you daft fool! I was just feeling it.” 

He gathers Merlin to his chest, holds his wrist in his hands between them and doesn’t let go. “I know the cost, my love. I know the cost.”  He presses his head to Merlin, so the braid is rough against his forehead. The material at their feet shifts. It rises in the air, swirls about them in a cloud of color and sound and memories. 

They are cocooned in a patchwork quilt. One heavy with tears and blood, but warm with laughter and adventure. Arthur lets go of Merlin’s hands so he can pull the edges of the strange blanket tight around them. 

“I know the cost, Merlin. And I’ll pay it.”

They make their way to the bed, and together they stretch their past across the mattress. They’ll sleep beneath it tonight, haunted by faces Merlin almost doesn’t want to see. They’ll sleep beneath it every night, soothed by lullabies in a long forgotten tongue. 

One day, even the blanket will fade and disintegrate, and with it them. But for now Merlin wears Arthur’s devotion in his brows, and Arthur is crowned in Merlin’s adoration.


End file.
